Local And Community History Month 2019

Local And Community History Month 2019

All of May is the Local and Community History month across the UK! The Historical Association, which is a charity registered and incorporated by the Royal Charter, supports education, enjoyment and the learning of history at all levels of teaching and adulthood. Their mission is to “inspire, enable and encourage” people across all walks of life to get involved with history, and the Local and Community history month is one of their ways to do it.

In this month, the Historical Association wants everyone to research and read, share information and raise awareness about the history of their communities and local areas. They also want people to hold events in their local area highlighting these, and to promote and advertise areas of heritage and historical concern. They have a social media hashtag for people to use to bring awareness which is #localhistory19.

Specifically for 2018, the Historical Association is focusing on the RAF as it’s the Royal Air Force’s Centenary year. The HA themselves have created an interactive map of every RAF base from 1916 to the present day which is a great resource to find out if there is or was an RAF base close to your community!

They are also asking anyone to find out more information about historical RAF sites and add this information to their map, to collate as much information as possible to share with the world! With over 2000 bases created since 1916, many have been built over, turned into commercial airports or closed down, so it’s worth looking to see if there was one near you that isn’t there anymore.